Posted on 07/10/2006 5:48:35 PM PDT by neverdem
Having grown up in the midst of many intelligent, down-home and courageous black women, I was appalled for 20 years by the silence of the women who were being demeaned and turned into sex toys so consistently in the worst hip-hop imagery. Where were the descendants of those black women who gave so much of the heat to the civil rights movement and made so many sacrifices for it? Why didn't anyone have the moxie, in the spirit of Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, to take on the $1.5 billion rap industry? Perhaps because, in our culture at this time, cowardice is more common than the common cold.
Yet when, in 2005, Essence started its "Take Back the Music" campaign to question this hate-filled and decadent material, 1 million hits came to its Web site in the first month. Yes, the campaign festered for awhile because of a lack of funding - but at a recent music festival in Atlanta, it began wobbling back to its feet. Eight thousand people in attendance seemed ready for war against dehumanizing images.
Well, time will tell (perhaps literally). Essence is, after all, owned by Time Warner, which makes more than a few pennies from hip-hop material.
But even if this campaign should peter out, the day is far from lost. Warming up in another corner is Yvonne Bynoe, author and lecturer. Having had more than enough, Bynoe wrote a remarkably intelligent defense of Oprah Winfrey on Davey D's Hip Hop Daily News (Daveyd.com) last month. Go there, I urge you, and read it yourself. With the letter, titled "Do Blacks Really Need Oprah to Be Down with Hip Hop?," Bynoe earns a place as a Thomas Paine in the movement against female degradation.
In reaction to the rappers like Ludacris who complain that Winfrey - the American Queen of Goodwill - has disrespected them or failed to support their careers, her rebuttal is so well thought out, so articulate and so full of righteous anger that I am sure that 50 Cent and Ice Cube suffered skin burns if they read it. Or could read it.
The young lady knows their work well, sees the illogic of their assertions and lays them out in a row like dead fish in the market. Unlike so many critics who tiptoe into such territory, Bynoe shows no inclination to be silenced by a flag of false ethnic solidarity. With confidence, she slaps aside all the manipulative ploys that rappers use against any who dare question their insipid material.
Of the attacks on Winfrey, Bynoe writes, "The underlining sentiment is that if she is unwilling to set aside her values and opinions, then she can't be down for black people. This position assumes that what is good for black entertainers is good for black folks, and that notion is arguable. There are many media outlets that expose U.S. rap artists to the global marketplace. However, Oprah is virtually alone in her ability, through her selection of guests, to provide the world with a broader view of black Americans and their achievements. For most of us, particularly black women, who are frequently equated with the images of half-naked, gyrating females found in the rap music videos, a countervailing portrayal is welcomed." Uh-oh.
Beware, you gold-and-diamond-toothed dogs, they are coming for you. They are young, educated, good-looking and fiery, meaning that they cannot be dismissed as old, out-of-touch, frustrated hags.
The dogcatchers are on the way.
Hahaha... Seriously old.
This is true. However, while Oprah will gladly host the obese and obtuse, the transgendered and transsexuals, the vamps and the victims, she has yet to do a program about black conservatives.
No, I just like making fun of jazz nerds.
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Well, okay then :-)
Are we not prostitutes to the companies we work for?
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You have a pathetic world view. I feel sorry for you if you do not understand that there are degrees of moral turpitude.
If only there would be more like this in the political arena who blast through the race-baiting and poverty-pimp scams with equal confidence and righteous outrage. I especially love the phrase "false ethnic solidarity" the author uses... any chance of seeing such comments applied to Jesse Jackson, NAACP, and their ilk?
These sad deluded girls just don't see the patterns they weave for themselves.
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Oh, that is happening all over, my friend, among white girls and black girls. Males, black and white, are targeted by the MSM and portrayed as evil and oppressive. Remember the bogus domestic violence figures?
I know that there are many young black men who are trying to live right, and the type of "music" we are discussing is just as injurious to their honor as it is to the honor of the women.
Women hold the keys to civilization, and women are currently not fulfilling their duty properly in that area. The hoods and gangstas of any color will prevail only if the women alow it.
cut and paste job
"Yes, the campaign festered for awhile because of a lack of funding"
Festered seems a poor choice, I would have chosen "lay fallow" had my goal been alliteration.
The view from the mattress is often clouded by passion.
Nothing wrong with that, unless he considers Kenny G as jazz.
Not me... and I suspect not most people. I've worked at the same company for over 16 years, and I've never even once been asked to do anything, or heard of anything, that was in any way illegal or unethical. Lots of people still have a compass.
He's probably one of six Americans to actually visit the Jazz Museum at Lincoln Center
So true-it isn't just black women.A lot of these young white females are cussing like sailors and dressing like little sluts.
I was no angel as a youngster myself.Yet this crowd of kids has taken raunchiness and immorality to a level that made my dope-smoking, wild in the streets crowd look like priggish old biddies!
Good one!I can say I've been on that mattress a few times myself.Sex is analogous to mob psychology-all rational thought and common sense vanish and some sort of primal force inserts itself and takes over.
I'm just glad I'm pretty much over all of that now.No one likes to admit there is this dreadful dark side to the human species and that the veneer of civilization is very thin.And I'm talking about in the some of the richest communities in America as well as some of the most decrepit inner city ghettoes.
And I've seen a few things in both parts of town.
Yet this crowd of kids has taken raunchiness and immorality....
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As I said, women hold the keys to civilization. I worry that the pendulum will not swing back.
I don't think the pendulum will ever swing back either.Its like Pandora's Box has opened up and no one really wants to close it and and say"Stop the madness".
We have bought into the libertine concept of an anything goes society which is why marriage and fidelity seem like they are archaic memories of another era.
people sometimes say that maybe I should associate with a church or some conservative group.Maybe so but I have found most of them just as lacking in solid moral grounding as the liberal lifestyle types.They just keep their dirt behind closed doors.
"there are degrees of moral turpitude."
Agreed.
Maybe I should have said "slave".
Prostitutes at least get tips.
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